Spielberg's Finest?

Tonight Mrs. Haslett, Mr. Finn and 27 TY historians are going to Dundrum to see War Horse, Stephen Spielberg adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's novel of the same name. The West End stage production is still selling out after several years but opinions in the film press have been divided on Spielberg's take on the story and the depiction of trench warfare in the Great War. We look forward to publishing the thoughts of some enthusiastic, budding reviewer soon.

Marlay Nursing Home

Last Friday members of the TY began a series of visits to our near neighbours the Marlay Nursing Home. Alex Owens, Molly Dunne and Joon Hee Kim engaged with the residents in their daily activities programme from 2-4pm. They will be joined in the coming weeks by Sadhbh Sheeran who is currently undertaking the Mini-Med Course in the Royal College of Surgeons.

Welcome back to make-up and muffins.

Our schedule of extra-curricular activities resumes on Tuesday this week with a course on cosmetics-making organised by Ms Hennessey, followed by another muffin-making session with Ms Kilfeather on Wednesday evening.

Further down the pipeline will be the inaugural TY Form Quiz where each pupil will be assigned to a team, named after a Greek philosopher. The teams will compete for the TY Quiz Trophy. The group of clever clogs who win will have their philosophic monicker inscribed on the trophy for future generations to gaze upon with a sense of awe and wonder.

'And still they gazed and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew...'

Fingers on buzzers, here's your starter for ten...



Christmas Greetings

As the holiday period approaches and the snow begins to fall, ever so gently, all TY pupils and staff are looking forward to a good rest after a very productive term. Sadhbh Sheeran will address the school at our end of term assembly, reflecting on the busy nature of TY so far and looking forward to some of next term's activities.

These will include the TY Form Quiz, more cooking, the commencement of classes in Mandarin Chinese and a short course on cosmetics making. No doubt we will have the cleverest, best fed, most multi-lingual and most beautiful TY in the country...

A very happy Chrismas to you all.

Merry Helix to You! Eircom Junior Spiders Awards

We Arrived...Through the Blizzard!

Today three TYers have the honour of representing this blog at the Eircom Junior Spiders Awards in the Helix at DCU. Accompanied by Mr. Swift, Sean Freney, Brendan Dickerson and Alex Owens will be manning our stall - and promoting the good work and achievements of St Columba's Transition Year Programme as evidenced online through Serpents & Doves. We're one of five shortlisted websites in the Best Project category of the Tera Spiders for pupils from Form IV upwards. So before the day is out we might be returning to school with a spidery pet - arachnophobes need not apply! And just to say - good luck to all our fellow nominees.

National Youth Orchestra of Ireland - Again!

More congratulations are due to another TY member as Siobhan Brady received word earlier this week that she has been offered a place in the 'cello section of the  National Youth Orchestra of Ireland. Siobhan will be well known to all Columbans as she is a regular performer in school. As well as her talents with the 'cello she is also a talented vocalist and no less than the daughter of our illustrious Director of Music, Geraldine Malone Brady. Siobhan will have fellow TY-er Clara Booth (Harp) for company during rehearsals. Well done all!

Under 18’s Hockey Inter-Provincials

Harry in his Columban colours

Harry Morris has written below about playing representative Hockey for his province. 

The  final  squad  for  the U­-18 Leinster  Hockey  team  was  selected  two weeks  ago. There was a lot of  preparation  leading  up  to  the  interpros.  We played the Irish women’s team twice before the interpros. We beat them comfortably both times.  On  the  18^th  of   November  the  Leinster  squad  met  at  the  Stillorgan  Park  hotel  at  11 o’clock  and  checked  in .  From  there  we took  a 10  minute  drive  to UCD  and  did  short   practice  and  set  plays.

The atmosphere  leading  up  to  this  game  was  very  tense. I  had  not  really  experienced  anything  like  this  in my  hockey  life. I  was  excited  but  nervous  at  the  same  time  which  you  would  expect. From UCD  we  went  back  to  the  hotel  we  got changed  and  then  went  down  to  our  meeting  room  where  we  had  lunch  and  talked  about  our  tactics. It  was  around 11.30  when  we  got  there  and  are  game  started  at 1.

3-2. That  was  the  score  that  nearly  lost  us  the interpros.  We played terribly. When  we  got  back  to  the  hotel  we  talked  about  what  we had done wrong. After  that  we  just  relaxed  and dozed  off  to  bed, tomorrow   was  even  more  important  for  us  now. We  got  a  reception  call  at  8 o’clock  and  went  for  a  relaxing  jog  to  wake  the  body  up. We got breakfast  at  9 o’clock. Our first game was  at  1:00  against  Munster. We left  the  hotel  at  11:30  and  arrived  at  11:45.

We  won  comfortably  against   Munster  (9-2)  and  this  set  us  up  for   a  crunch  match  against  Ulster  later  that  day  as  Ulster  had  also  beaten  Munster. This  meant  that  Munster  had  to  beat  Ulster  for  us  to  have  a  chance of  winning  the tournament. To  our  amazement  Munster  beat  Ulster  (1-0)  with  Ulster  missing  a  stroke  on  the  final  whistle. It  only  remained  for  us  to beat  Munster  in  order  to  win  the  tournament  we  did so  by  beating  Munster  (9-2).

 It  was a  huge  honour  to  play  for  my  province  and  the  standard  was  better  than  anything  I  had  played  in  before.

Shortly after the interpros I received word that (along with R. Canning VI) I had been shortlisted for the U-18 Ireland squad - another great honour and no doubt another leap in standard.

For a full report on the tournament click here:

http://www.hookhockey.com/index.php/2011/11/advantage-ulster-at-u-18-leinster-u-16-on-top/

And here: http://www.hookhockey.com/index.php/2011/11/leinster-record-rare-interprovincial-double/